AU Planning Meme (June + July)

[bravenewmods]

AU PLANNING MEME

Given the nature of AU, below is a form that can be used for planning purposes when plotting out your character. While it is not required to fill out the form, we encourage you take a look at the listings in this post and use them as a guide when setting up plots or planning character backgrounds.

<b>Player Name:</b> (What name you go by in-game) <b>Contact Info:</b> (What is the best way to contact you for plotting purposes) <b>Character Name:</b> (The name of your character) <b>Canon Name:</b> (What canon they come from) <b>Brief History:</b> (A brief blurb about the character, does not have to be overly detailed. This is used to give a basic idea of who this character is) <b>AU Ideas:</b> (Here is where you talk about what plans you may have for your character's intended AU. Reading this, others should hopefully get an idea of what you intend to do with your character's back story pertaining to the game's setting.) <b>Looking For:</b> (This section is for hypothetical things you would like to see, be it events, people related to them, whatever; canon parallels, character proxies, all of that goes here.) <b>Anything else?:</b> (Anything that you feel has been overlooked or that should be noted goes here.)

Comments

[peripeteia]

Player Name: Isabel
Contact Info: unspeakingly

Character Name: Elizabeth Comstock
Canon Name: Bioshock Infinite
Brief History: A man saves a girl from the tower she has spent her entire life in, and the two of them attempt to escape from a floating city with the help of the girl's ability to open holes in space and time to alternate universes. Lots of fucked up things happen and the girl ends up angry, jaded, and omniscient. This makes her an expert on determinism.

AU Ideas: Okay, she is Little Miss "Needs Mod Approval For Everything", so keep in mind that this is aaaaall tentative.

BNW doesn't really have the capacity to be half as fucked up as Bioshock, so a lot of things are going to be toned down and less intense. Right now, I'm thinking that she could be the prisoner of Zachary Hale Comstock, an aristocrat from Gigas. Unbeknownst to her, he touts her as his daughter, an Enlightened "miracle child", and he intends to groom her into the service of Gigas as a powerful weapon. To this end, Comstock has experimented with ways to control her powers and make her obedient.

All Elizabeth knows is that she has spent seventeen years locked in a tower with no human contact, guarded and cared for by a Skarmory she named Songbird. And then one day, something goes wrong - due to a lack of Booker (unless someone wants to bring him, wink wink), she won't be sprung from her prison so directly, but there will be some kind of chaos that distracts Songbird and gives her a way out of the tower. She flees, and eventually comes across Union.

The main thing I'm not sure about is what I'm gonna do with her powers. In canon, due to being split between two universes, she has the power to open "tears" in space and time to other realities. This mostly has three applications; 1) she can peer into the past, usually to listen in on conversations; 2) she can "pull" objects through from one reality to her own; 3) she can open or step through entire tears into a different reality or location altogether. Elizabeth refers to it as a form of wish fulfilment, i.e. if she sees a tear, it is generally what she wants/needs at that moment, such as a view of the Eiffel Tower she opens when she's locked up.

OBVIOUSLY SHE WON'T BE THAT OVERPOWERED..... I'm just thinking about whether I want to try and translate her powers into BNW as a toned down version, or if I should just ditch that aspect altogether and make her a powerful but otherwise ordinary Psychic-type Enlightened. If I kept the tears, it would be very reduced; maybe she can pull through objects (larger/more complex ones as she evolves) and otherwise can pretty much only open minor "windows", possibly as a plot mechanic? For example, an old ruin might have a tear that shows a conversation from the past. If anybody has suggestions I will love you forever.

Looking For: Firstly, she'd probably need someone to stumble across her out in the wilds, and bring her back to Union! So, like. I'd take volunteers for that. She will also be totally clueless and naive, and if she doesn't have Booker to look after her, someone else should... probably take up that role...

I'd probably want to try and recreate the character development she goes through in canon, although I'd like to see how it might be altered somewhat by BNW's setting - she might not become as jaded as in Bioshock due to less intense torture and rampant murder.

But basically, over the course of canon, she becomes less naive, more world-wise, pragmatic, and adamant about her freedom. Sooo I guess, exposure to any player plots that might lead her in this direction is something I'd be looking for, and how close she comes to canon "I will murder my father in cold blood" Elizabeth will depend on what happens in BNW. I'd love to have her second evolution line up with her getting recaptured by Comstock and rescued but that would be difficult since obviously y'all can't just go... strolling into Gigas.

Anything else?: Somebody should choose which city is her favourite for me because we don't have Kalos' Pokemon Paris, quick!!

[platinumlucifer]

Just a note, you'll want to make sure that her "father" figure is left nameless. Generally our policy is that if it's a character who is even remotely appable, there needs to be a work-around.

[peripeteia]

no worries! as per canon, she will have no idea who locked her up or anything, and i'll make sure i leave out the name in the AU history section of her app.

[darer]

Well we can't all go storming into Gigas but if we hit whoever captured her on the road back.........

[peripeteia]

.... omg that is definitely true. having her rescued from a camp of nameless Gigas soldiers on the road would solve the "having to go to Gigas" issue, still allow her to have gone through some Bad Shit since being recaptured, and it would fix the problem of "how do I get through this without referring to Comstock by name". KITE YOU'RE THE BEST

[imprudens]

I AM HAPPY TO HELP also I mean lbr there would be a whole squad of people running off to free her LBR

[peripeteia]

i'm very glad that the BNW experience of rescuing her would be a thousand times less painful for the rescue squad than the Bioshock experience of rescuing her, which imo is the most hellish part of the entire game bc it suddenly turns into a stealth-style horror game in a Bad End alternate future!! fun times!!!

[imprudens]

... that's. That sounds terrible. AND YEAH I am likewise glad for this. Also, could you possibly get away with referring to Booker as having been there without him having given his name? Like, so she'd know him at least?

[peripeteia]

oh, that's a good idea!! i could possibly say that she had a Mysterious Rescuer whose name she never caught, but they got separated on their way out of the city, and at least that way if we ever got a Booker there would be the potential for an established relationship to build off that mirrors their canon dynamic.

[imprudens]

Sweet! :D I think that'd be nice so that any potential future Booker doesn't have to start from 0 with her.

uhm what else.

Songbird is a shiny skarmory right?

[peripeteia]

HMMM i don't mind much either way for Songbird, since neither Skarmory colour scheme is particularly close to his leathery steampunk design. shiny does make him a little more bronze than the regular, though! and he'll probably be unpleasantly modified either way bc he would have been experimented on for a way to make him 100% obedient + imprint on Elizabeth without her having to bond with him.

[imprudens]

That makes sense! ... terrible.
Uhmmmm also I will forever offer both of mine for CR. Totsuka is great at befriending people but not very good at having them end up jaded. Like, at all. He actively works against it.
And then Thorin is a kind of dad so I would not be surprised if that became a thing.

[peripeteia]

omg Totsuka.... i'm so sorry, Elizabeth is the kind of person that actively pursues awful moral quandary questions and then is devastated by the answers she gets. also, you know, the whole downside of Rapunzel childhood being that she is painfully naive and thus is deeply hurt by anything negative, hahaha.

Thorin is 100% welcome to adopt her because there is no way he could be a worse dad than Comstock or Booker.

[imprudens]

He will still try and help her see the positive past that! I'm so sorry it'll probably be painful for everyone.

Thorin is a surprisingly good dad in this AU, and I mean, Comstock is not a high bar to clear anyway...

[faithfulflame]

You could also use the tears as simple Teleport moves as well, now that I'm actually looking at this. And it'd be kinda neat to see Elizabeth build up a cache of random nonsense that seems nonsensical to the outside observer or is so situationally useful, only to just have her pull it out at just the right moment.

Also I can say I'd love Elizabeth CR. I don't know who with, and I can't really offer an older male as a mentor. Yuuna's a pretty good Ranger and or mentor-ish person but probably not what you're looking for. Regardless, gimme.

[nippy]

lmao yeah, weird gimmick that suddenly saves the day by being exactly what you need at just the right moment is definitely Elizabeth's thing. a form of Teleport is a good suggestion! and her visual tears aren't really that far off from a lot of Psychic Enlightened abilities, like telepathy and empathy. even in the case of Teleport, i can definitely imagine Elizabeth going on to try and figure out how exactly that works, and bringing up the theoretical physics/multiple universe theory on her own, bc she's.... a nerd.

THAT'S OKAY she needs normal friends too, her entire life has been spent with nothing but a big fucking metal bird for company. she will treasure pretty much any CR she gets.

[faithfulflame]

Nerds are good. The best kind of thing.

And really that'd be pretty spectacular, for Yuuna in particular. She has this weird habit of adopting shut-ins, social outcasts, and "teh nerdz" like Waver and Ami Mizuno. Let her show you the world, Liz.